Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
How to make money on Snapchat
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhile you may think Snapchat is something that your kids do, or just another teenage fad soon to die away, in reality it can be a great money making opportunity for people of all ages with very little work and a lack of competition…for now. Most brands and businesses aren’t utilising Snapchat’s potential yet, so MoneyMagpie will walk you through how to make money on Snapchat now and get ahead of the pack.
Whether it be you, your business, or your kids, there are many ways to generate a reliable income from all that time spent on social media and Snapchat is no exception: as the fastest growing social media platform (so fast that it is now being publicly traded and reported revenues of $2.5bn last year) Snapchat also presents a great opportunity for growth moving forward.
What is Snapchat?
Founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Snapchat differs from other social media platforms in that it is time limited. That is to say, Snapchat is a platform that lets you send ‘snaps’ – photos or short videos of up to 10 seconds – to your friends or contacts or broadcast them publicly in stories, but when time’s up the snap is deleted and no longer accessible to your followers.
Snapchat is huge, and growing. Boasting 280 million daily users (or for us, 280 million potential customers) in the first quarter of 2021 alone, the platform is particularly popular with young people, who create over 5 billion snaps and 18 billion video views a day. Over half (53% according to Statistica) of social media users between 15 and 25 use Snapchat, with a staggering 70% of U.S teens using the app. In fact, among American teens Snapchat is the most popular social media platform, attracting more daily users than both Instagram and Tik Tok.
Obviously, that means any money making methods MoneyMagpie suggest will be best directed towards this tech savvy demographic. With time limited posts, you may be wondering exactly how to make money on Snapchat. Well, you’ll need to hone in on a niche product or service to promote, partner yourself with an established brand or influencer, or use one of Snapchat’s different features.
How much can I make on Snapchat?
As with any business venture this depends. The major brands and influencers with enormous social media followings can make millions, but with regular and effective Snapchat use any user can boost their income by several thousand.
See MoneyMagpie’s top 5 ways of making money from Snapchat below:
How to make money from Snapchat
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Snapchat Ads
Snapchat Ads can be a great way of advertising your business or a specific product or service to millions of users across the world. Snapchat’s advertising platform, Snap Ads, is viewed by between 500,000 and 1 million users a day, so this is a great option to increase your business or brand profile, and lets you create ads and launch campaigns, though you will need to send traffic to an external page (your company website, or online shop, for example) where they can complete a purchase.
Using a money-processing program like Snapcash can streamline all your payments and transform your social media time into an online marketplace and help you make more money from Snapchat.
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Sell your snaps
If you are an influencer with a big following, or know one (if not, ask your kids!) some companies will pay to advertise their products to your followers. Many are on the lookout for influencers that can attract significant attention and traffic to their products, and offers for sponsored content and ongoing partnerships are common among those with large followings. For the bigger brands and companies, you can make thousands from a single Snapchat story.
Equally, if you are a business owner, this a great way to promote your products or services. The social media heavyweights with huge followings will charge tens of, and perhaps hundreds of, thousands, but fees can be much more reasonable for influencers with a smaller following so shop around to find an influencer who appeals to your niche target market, and budget.
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Use Geofilters
Geofilters are designs put over snaps that are only available if you’re in a specific area at a certain time, and can be a great way to increase awareness for your brand or business in whatever location you select.
If you’re a business, you can include your business name or logo so those who use and see your filter know it’s sponsored and exactly who by.
This is great way to promote a product or brand name and make money from Snapchat. You can use it to promote your online store or redirect traffic to your site, and create a free geofilter for a location that is important or nearby to your business such as a business park or public landmark.
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Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is common on many platforms but is a great way to make extra money from Snapchat. Affiliate marketing is essentially promoting other people’s products and earning a commission per sale: if you want to make money on Snapchat, affiliate marketing can be a extremely lucrative and easy way to do it.
The main advantage is that you can start with relatively little fuss or experience and earn more money than other methods because of the commissions. However, like any commission based business, you don’t get paid when you don’t generate sales.
How does it work? If you post a Snap showing off or reviewing a particular product and then include a link to buy it, you’ll make a commission from anything they then buy, not only the specific item you linked to! Sounds good, right? It’s a very easy way to make extra money from Snapchat but you have to be clear you’re using an affiliate link – otherwise you might fall foul of advertising laws!
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Using sponsored lenses
Sponsored lenses are another way to promote your brand or business and make money from Snapchat. Snapchat Lenses are similar to filters, but lenses are more like special effects added to photos or videos. Have you ever noticed your kids playing around with those on-screen dog faces? That’s a lens. Branded lenses usually include your business name, logo, and the product or service you want to promote.
Business like L’Oréal pay for Sponsored Lenses which users then access and share and do the promotion for the company. Lots of big brands use sponsored lenses to increase sales, awareness, and as part of promotional pushes. Note that this is more of a long term – and expensive – method of making money from Snapchat, so is usually only used by established brands.
Good ideas here.